GUWAHATI, NOV 18: The visit of top-ranking military officials of Myanmar is seen in New Delhi as the beginning of a new era in Indo-Myanmarese relations on two particular fronts, combatting insurgency and improving trade relations between the two neighbours.The Kachin area in Myanmar, which is situated next to India's eastern boundary touching parts of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur, has been not just a safe haven but also a breeding-ground for various insurgent groups of the North-East. The erstwhile Kachin Independent Army (KIA), apart from providing arms and ammunition to the insurgent groups of the North-East, imparted training in sophisticated weapons for several years.The NSCN was one of the first underground groups that made its way into Myanmarese territory in the early eighties. The Myanmarese rebels are said to have helped the Naga rebels set up proper training camps in the area that used to be till recently known as the ``Naga free area''.The Myanmarese Government did not have much control over the Kachin area for long, and this had facilitated the growth of the KIA as a virtual government. The KIA virtually ran its own government in this ``free area'' for long, with the Naga groups enjoying free access to it. The KIA, on its part, is said to have been initially promoted and patronised by China.The KIA had two intentions. One, it could earn its own revenue by imparting training to the North-East rebel groups, and two, it could sell arms to them for carrying out their activities in the North-East.One major advantage the KIA and the Naga rebels had was that a vast tract inside the Myanmarese territory is inhabited by the Konyak and Anal Naga tribes, who also have their brethren in the Indian side. S S Khaplang, the leader of NSCN (Khaplang), incidentally is a Naga national from the Myanmarese side.The United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), which grew up under the patronage of the NSCN in the late 1980s, too had its training camps inside Myanmar alongside the Naga rebels' camps, and a large number of ULFA cadres of the initial period had received their arms training directly under the supervision of KIA leaders.Intelligence reports have pointed out that the presence of the drugs tycoon Khun Tsa in the Kachin area contributed to the thriving of the rebel groups from the North-East, with the former utilising their services for trafficking drugs into India.With the political situation changing in mainland Myanmar and the KIA having dissolved, things have improved. Currently, there is hardly any major presence of the North-East rebel groups inside Myanmar, except for some camps belonging to the NSCN-K faction.While India had extended cooperation to the Myanmarese regime in controlling the Kachin Independent Army (KIA), what is yet to happen is a joint regional initiative to end terrorism and insurgency in the entire region.While the insurgency situation in the Indo-Myanmar region is different from that of the Indo-Pakistan border region, there is indeed scope to proceed in the direction of joint cooperation. An example that can be followed is recent Indo-Bhutan initiative to crush the ULFA and the Bodo groups currently holed up in the tiny Himalayan kingdom.So is the example of the Indo-Bangladesh intiative to flush out the ULFA and Manipuri rebel groups from that country. The arrest of ULFA general secretary Anup Chetia in Dhaka in December, 1997, was the fallout of the joint initiative. The Bangladesh government had also frozen the bank account of the ULFA that it had maintained in the Sonali Bank a few years ago.The Myanmar army had in the past participated in a joint operation against a team of the United Liberation Fronf of Asom, NSCN and PLA in the southern Myanmar where the borders of the three countries including India and Bangladesh meet.
